My Problem With "Professionalism"

When I was a first year in high school, I wore a tie to school every day. Sometimes, on Fridays, I wore sneakers instead of dress shoes. But I always wore a tie. I had transferred from a public school setting in The City to a private school setting in the suburbs and this was one of the ways I felt like I was preparing myself for all that was to come. At the time, I had no idea how problematic my idea of “preparing myself” was, but in hindsight, I shake my head.

For so many Black students (but also Black employees, Black entrepreneurs and Black people more generally) who have to learn and work and live in predominantly white environments, we morph ourselves for both the spoken and unspoken rules of white comfort. Some call it code switching and others call it assimilating, but it’s all under the white gaze and guise made by groups of old white guys and gals called “professionalism”. From the youth programs that analogize manhood with the ability to tie a tie to workplace conduct policies that prohibit certain hairstyles, non-white cultural norms (and more specifically, Black cultural practices) are consistently policed and prosecuted.

I have many problems with the policing and prosecution of Black culture by way of the “standards of professionalism”, but one of my greatest qualms is that professionalism does not correlate to a more positive performance. No matter how we wear our hair and no matter what we choose to tie (or not tie) around our necks, Black people still show up and show out in classrooms, on the job and for the culture. As a matter of fact, even when we choose to wear our hair in ways that white people understand and even when we choose to strangle our necks with ropes tied back to European fashion trends, we are still policed and prosecuted. 

I may have worn a tie all five days of the week during my first year of high school, but that didn’t stop me from being suffocated in the classroom and on the court by students and teammates whose microaggressions had a macro-impact on my understanding of self; I was just offended and had a high dry cleaning bill.

I’m sure in high school, I thought I was the flyest kid in the building. They say when you look good, feel good and when you feel good, you do your best. At that point in my life, a white collar with heavy starch, a Double Windsor and a fresh pair of all white AF-1s was good looking to me. Now, I look better, feel better and am doing my best in attire that would suggest otherwise. I don’t do it to be difficult, I do it because whether I’m tied up or dripped down, my presence is a protest and I’d rather protest in clothes that make me feel comfortable than in clothes that comfort a world that does not care about me.